Telegraph Festival of Business: Will King says business needs engineers

Will King wants to meet mechanical engineers at the Telegraph’s Festival of
Business. It is perhaps not an obvious choice for the founder of a £13m
turnover shaving products empire.

King gave himself three years – it took five in the end – to launch King of Shaves’ first razor. The development time was in part because of patents owned by the likes of Gillette around the design of its handles.

But the Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire-based entrepreneur is still fuming about derogatory remarks made by Lord Sugar on The Apprentice TV show about the contribution that engineers can make to business.

Lord Sugar said he had never met an engineer who could turn his hand to business when he fired contestant Glenn Ward, a design engineer. King, a mechanical engineer by training, reels off software engineers like Bill Gates and design engineers like Sir James Dyson to challenge Lord Sugar’s apparent view.

“Isambard Kingdom Brunel would be today’s [Mark] Zuckerberg of Facebook,” says King, calling for more engineers to play a central role in business. “We have to make things and make things happen rather than simply facilitating things.”

King says his engineering background has helped him get his head around the world of patents and trademarks that determine what innovation can occur in men’s shaving.

He gave himself three years – it took five in the end – to launch King of Shaves’ first razor. The development time was in part because of patents owned by the likes of Gillette around the design of its handles.

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“You can't just say I have a successful [men’s shaving] oils business and so I can have a successful blades and razors business, too,” he says. “You have to find out what the key patents are and the engineering behind it all. All the smokes and mirrors stuff.

We found there are half a dozen killer patents there so you work your way around them.” King launched his King of Shaves Azor razor in 2008 and it sold around half a million units in the UK last year, making it the third best selling system after two versions of Gillette’s Fusion range.

The King of Shaves Company, of which King owns 30pc – the rest is mostly owned by family and friends – is small and light of foot, employing 20 people. King cites as an example of this approach, his response to Gillette’s shaving promotion with Roger Federer during Wimbledon.

The US giant carried out what it claimed was the “world’s biggest shave” on an image of the tennis star painted on to a field and posted the video as a viral marketing initiative.

King responded by “seeding” Wimbledon with 1,000 shaved tennis balls, with labels like “The Closest Shave A Ball Can Get”, and setting up a mock tennis match with Andy Murray and Roger Federer look-a-likes playing out a game with Gillette and King of Shaves razors as racquets.

“It’s about a mindset,” says King. “We have to expect the unexpected all the time. But to do that you need a strategy built into the management team that the unexpected will try to have a go at you. When you are a challenger brand you will also be challenged.